Prices in Jakarta can be ridiculous if you are an expat. Locals charge you higher, special expat prices. Sometimes, they will even charge you a blonde price, if you look that good.

Guess how much these two imported black plums that are not even fresh will cost you?

Surprised? Wait till you see the two avocados below:

Yes, you are not wrong. They charge you more than USD8 for two imported avocados. Guess that’s OK, when we pay AUD2-3 for one avocado in Sydney. Petrol, fuel cost are increasing by the day, inflation, inflation…

Wait, we have even more surprises for you. Guess how much this bunch of bananas cost you? You will never guess right. So we will tell you now.

RP440. How did this happen?

No idea.

We were in a rush and grabbed these bananas in the supermarket. We ended up paying RP440 for these, that’s USD 5 cents. Have you ever paid 5 cents for a bunch of bananas like these? Anywhere in the world? We would be surprised if you do.

Upon checking, we figure this is a one off human error. Someone happened to put the wrong price tag on these bananas. If you check closely, we were actually paying for some baby sweet oranges (jeruks).

But the price still didn’t look right even if they were baby oranges. Baby oranges still cost much more than USD 5 cents.

Oh, well, guess that’s one of the benefits of living in Jakarta. Very confused, but somehow benefiting from it?

It rained today, again, just like any other day in the past week here in Jakarta. The rain started around mid day though, not the same as previous days. We ended up having blue skies again at around 2 o’clock. Felt much better this way! We got a whole afternoon without rain. Hurray!

As you know, the reveal for last week’s MidnightVisitor Quiz: Christmas Celebration – when shall we start’ won’t be released until 25th of Dec, 2012, the actual Christmas day. But it would be nice to know how we fare so far, wouldn’t it? Let’s peek just a bit, and see how we go so far. That’s nice, don’t you think?

Well, so far, we have the votes in as below:

80% – we should start to celebrate Christmas 1 month prior the big day. Yeh, we are level headed beings, very sensible.

20% – we should celebrate Christmas any time we like. Brave souls. We admire you!

Actually, this result fits the 20-80 rule perfectly. Don’t know what a 20-80 rule is? Well it is also called the Pareto principle or Pareto efficiency. Here is what we find on wikipedia:

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80–20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.[1][2]

Business-management consultant Joseph M. Juran suggested the principle and named it after Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto, who observed in 1906 that 80% of the land in Italy was owned by 20% of the population; he developed the principle by observing that 20% of the pea pods in his garden contained 80% of the peas.[2]

It is a common rule of thumb in business; e.g., “80% of your sales come from 20% of your clients”.

The Pareto principle is only tangentially related to Pareto efficiency, which was also introduced by the same economist. Pareto developed both concepts in the context of the distribution of income and wealth among the population.

Based on this rule, 20% of the voters so far are the main force in the Christmas fever. They are the advocates, the passion, the fire, the spirit and soul of the Christmas celebration.

And the 80%, they are only going through a storm (like the one we just had today). Remember the quote for this week from Garrison Keillor?

A lovely thing about Christmas is that it’s compulsory, like a thunderstorm, and we all go through it together.

What do you think? Like the Pareto principle? Which side are you on this Christmas according to the Pareto principle? It would be interesting to know.

There are just so much rain here in Jakarta at the moment. Every day, 3 o’clock on the dot, it starts to rain.

Just a quick note for this week’s MidnightVisitor Quiz. Since we have started celebrating Christmas early this year, we want to know if that’s OK.

Anyone out there actually enjoys celebrating Christmas as early as possible, like us? Or, you just hate to mention Christmas. Not that you don’t like Christmas, but that it might just be a bit too early. It is not even December yet, some would think.

Every since we started our MidNightVisitor’s blog, we were fascinated by Google. So many strangers were visiting our blog thanks to Google. Naturally, we want to know: How to rank No. 1 on Google?

We are hard working people and full of curiosity too. We did our own research. We type in lots of search terms in Google to see how we fare:

1. midnightvisitor jakarta or midnightvisitor blog

Not surprisingly, we ranked No. 1 on Google search. In fact, the top 6 posts all belong to Midnightvisitor. Holy cow! OK, now we know that we are truly famous in this universe, at least in Jakarta or in the blog sphere, that is.

If you ever think about opening a franchise of night clubs in Jakarta, you know whose door you should be knocking.

2. christmas dress jakarta

We are fashion oriented people and we love Christmas. Again, we ranked No. 1 on Google search on this one (other than the paid advertisement, of course).

Now we are talking. We made a plaque to make Christmas dress our specialty as soon as we saw this result. Come on girls, let’s doing some Christmas shopping together. That’s a whole lot of fun.

3. jakarta christmas carols

Christmas again. This time it is our magical Christmas Carols. We love Christmas carols. And Google sure knows that. We ranked on the Google search first page again. Not ranked as No. 1 but we have two, no we have three entries on the Google first page. We are sure happy about that. Singing is our specialty as well, do you remember?

4. jakarta itinerary 3 days

Want to travel a bit in Jakarta? Well, search for ‘jakarta itinerary 3 days’ and you will find MidnightVisitor again, on Google first page ranked as: No. 5. We are so proud. We need to negotiate with Jakarta tourism bureau straight away because they should brand us the Tourism Ambassador to Jakarta. No doubt about that!

Sadly, we are a bit too ambitious, if you minus the ‘3 days’ in your Google search, you won’t find us anymore. But, hey, on second look, we are still on Google search second page. In fact, all of the three Jakarta itineraries we have written are all there. Google sure loves us dearly. We couldn’t be more happier. What do you think?

By the way, do you know anyone from Jakarta tourism bureau? Maybe a nice suggestion of naming us the Jakarta Tourism Ambassador of the Year should be in order? Come on, there are still time left for 2012. We wouldn’t mind to be the Ambassador for 2013 either. Just spread the words, will you?

5. Wine and candles

Ummm……… love this one, in true Christmas spirit. We sure know how to have a great time in the Midnight’s house. But on second thought, in reality, actually we have hardly written anything about wine or candles. Don’t get us wrong. We love our wine and candles. But we are also family oriented and don’t want to spoil our public images like that. Now that we are famous, we have to keep up the good images.

However, Google comes to the rescue. Google sure knows us by now and in fact Google loves us, and we are ranked on Google first page again! Geee, how did this happen? Still puzzles us to this day.

OK, be careful when you read the search results. It is the second entry on Google search, with 4 beautiful pictures of wine and candles. There we are, the third picture belongs to us. We are truly honored and are very, very proud of ourselves! Well done, Midnight!

So this Christmas, 2012, we don’t need your money, nor your love. We are not money oriented people. We don’t care much about the former so long as we have our fare share from our hard labour. And love, oh boy, we have plenty of love right here in the Midnight’s house. We are pretty contended with the love we already have.

For this Christmas, 2012, our wish is for you to type in Google, and search any of the terms above. See how your results are. Are they any different from ours? Give those fingers a little exercise, type in those magical words now.

We thank you from the bottom of our hearts. God bless.

Oh, and for the Reveal, honestly, we don’t have an answer. By now, we are totally, madly in love with Google. We think Google is the one and only. There is nothing Google cannot find.

And just for the record, if you say anything otherwise, you won’t be our friends any more. We will cut off our phone lines, or messaging, or any possible social media network from you. We don’t want to know you unless you are madly in love with Google. Like us.

See you next week, until then, keep those fingers exercising and keep on Googling. 😀

Love from the Midnight’s House. 2012 one month prior to Christmas.

Disclaimer: We do not know anyone from Google. Nor did we receive any monetary incentive from Google for this article. Use Google at your very own risk.

Hi, there. It is getting late and we haven’t done this week’s Time To Reveal yet.

Last week, we asked:

How many Christmas Gifts will the lucky person in“The Twelve Days of Christmas” carol get?

Have you figured out? Well, a week has passed and we have to get our mathematics right. So without further ado, here is the answer:

The lucky person in ‘The twelve days of Christmas’ carol will get 364 presents!

364 presents? Is that lucky or what? Where is he going to put all these Christmas presents? He definitely needs a warehouse for these. Good for the economy. We should do this more often. We won’t have a recession if it is Christmas everyday in his house. 😀

How many Christmas presents do you wish to get this year? Hurry up, rent that warehouse before we get in. We are renting ours tomorrow…

Christmas is such a magical time with gifts galore for everyone. Who is the real Santa Clause this year? Do you know?

Our best bet is….(drum-rolls)…

Google!

Show us something Google can’t find, and we will send you a medal for the world’s Guinness record.

For the record, we think for this year, you can find anything, yep, anything from Google search. Online shopping is a wonderful thing and it is very popular. What are you fancy this year? Fashion, food, travel, entertainment? Google can satisfy any possible human needs in less than 1 second. Lightning fast. Actually Google search is so fast that it is kind of scary sometimes.

To add some fun to our Christmas hunting, this week’s MidNightVisitor’s Quiz is:

Show Me A Christmas Present Google Can’t Find.

OK, we are no Einstein, and to be honest, we have no answer to this quiz.

But God knows, there must be someone out there, who knows better. Maybe we should do a Google search? What do you think? We are typing right now.

So you have read the previous post about our favorite Christmas Carols. Is there any of your favorite carols on our list? We love the 12 Days of Christmas carol.

This week’s MidNightVisitor’s Quiz is related to this Christmas Carol:

How many Christmas gifts do you wish to get in 2012? Well, the lucky person in “The Twelve Days of Christmas” carol has received quite a lot of gifts. Don’t you think? But exactly how many Christmas presents has he received? Find the answer. It will amaze you!

We have done the homework, and this time we do know our answer. So put your thinking caps on and start counting. You have a whole week to work this out.

Why not get your kids to give you a hand? They must love this puzzle and all the Christmas Carols.

Have fun.

As usual, the answer will be revealed next Monday. Until then, have a great week.

What is this man doing with his bamboo pole?

This question is a bit hard to answer because the picture doesn’t reveal much. So any reply remotely related to our answer will be considered as a winning entry. How generous is that! Even Miss D wants to vote now. 😀

Oh, want to see how we normally get into the school gate? Here are some pictures:

Mum leaving school through the side door. It is a 1000 meter walk before we can actually reach the real school gate where you can see any students or classrooms.

Security guard opening the main gate for cars. This yellow gate is closed at all times unless a car is coming.

Every car is stopped and windows down for security guard to check. Randomly, car boots and doors have to be opened for checking as well.

Not an easy life, don’t you think?

As usual, the reveal will be next Monday. So please come back and check our Time To Reveal next week.

Send us your addresses and your Christmas cards will be on their way! 😀

Now, the reveal:

Inside this bamboo wrapping is: Boiled Rice!

Its Indonesia name is Ketupat. Ketupat also means the shape Diamond in Indonesia Language. So we figure its name referred to its shape.

Actually we realized that our question is not totally right. Because it is actually not Bamboo wrapping! It is palm leaves or some other kind of leaves! Sorry, that’s what in a foreign country does to us. Sometimes, we thought we knew, while in reality, we might not.

Below is what we got from Wikipedia about Ketupat:

It is made from rice that has been wrapped in a woven palm leaf pouch and boiled. As the rice cooks, the grains expand to fill the pouch and the rice becomes compressed. This method of cooking gives the ketupat its characteristic form and texture of a rice dumpling. Ketupat is usually eaten with rendang or served as an accompaniment to satay(chicken or beef or lamb in skewers) or gado-gado (mixed vegetables with peanut sauce).

Local stories passed down through the generations have attributed the creation of this style of rice preparation to the seafarers’ need to keep cooked rice from spoiling during long sea voyages. The coco leaves used in wrapping the rice are always shaped into a triangular form and stored hanging in bunches in the open air. The shape of the package facilitates moisture to drip away from the cooked rice while the coco leaves allow the rice to be aerated and at the same time prevent flies and insects from touching it.

So there you go, what a learning curve! Open your eyes, and everyday life can be very fascinating. Enjoy your ride!

31 Days In Jakarta Day 24

MidNightVisitor Quiz

Jakarta street food is a scene in itself. You don’t see many of the street food stalls during the day. From what we observe, these stalls come out twice a day. Once in the morning so people buy their breakfast. Then again in the late afternoon and last till mid night selling dinner.

Street food stall galore. These stalls sell all kinds of Indonesia food. Many we have never seen or heard before.

Es Podeng stall. Es means ice. So this is an ice-cream stall, we think. Never tried though. Hope it’s yummy. Looks like they serve all kinds of toppings here. Nice indeed.

Sate Padang stall. They sell beef satay from an Indonesia place called Padang. Padang food is very famous in Indonesia.

Drink stall. They sell all kinds of bottled or canned drinks. Mineral water, tea, orange juice, soft drinks, etc, etc. See all the motorbikes? These are the everyday transport people use to get to places.

One thing about Indonesia food is, they use lots of organic wrappings, such as banana leaves and bamboo leaves. The food looks somehow more inviting this way.

We really like the weaving bamboo wrapping of this food. So this week’s MidNightVisitor’s Quiz is:

What is inside this bamboo wrapping?

We are sure lots of our readers in Jakarta or southeast Asia know it as soon as they see the picture.

31 Days In Jakarta Day 15

Time To Reveal

We want to thank our readers who know the answer to this quiz, but kept it a secret so everyone else can have their chances. Thank you, middlewaymom &Runner Girl Eats, we appreciate your consideration.

The arrow in this drawer is pointing to the direction of the Holy City of Mecca in Saudi Arabia.

As you know, Mecca is the centre of the Islamic world. It is the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad. Each day all the Muslims ( there are over one billion of Muslims in the world if you do not know) face Mecca to pray. That’s why the hotels in Muslim countries have this arrow in their hotel room.

Look at the crescent and

star in this drawer, it is

the holy symbol of Islam.

But the arrow is not always like this.

It can be as simple as a normal arrow like this.

Do you know how many times a Muslim pray in a day? Well some of our friends pray 5 times a day. Before pray, they will wash their faces and their hands.

31 Days in Jakarta Day 8 – continue

MidNightVisitor Quiz

We lived in Kristal Hotel in South Jakarta when we first arrived in Jakarta. Kristal Hotel has a unique combination of hotel service and apartment accommodation. It offers 320 one, two and three bedroom suites and 8 penthouses.

We lived in the serviced apartment with kitchenette, refrigerator, water dispenser and standard guest amenities.

Krystle Hotel is very kids friendly. It has a playground, tennis court and swimming pool for outdoor activities for kids.

It also provides non-smoking floors which we really enjoy.

One thing puzzled us is the Arrow in the picture below. We saw one in the Kristal Hotel as well. It is a prominent arrow which sits inside the drawer of the desk of our hotel room. Do you know what it is?

So this week’s MidNightVisitor’s Quiz is:

What is the arrow in this drawer for?

We are pretty sure lots of our readers recognize it as soon as they see the picture. Please stay tuned, the answer will be revealed next Monday as usual.

Until then, have a lovely day and see you tomorrow in another ’31 Days in Jakarta’.

31 Days In Jakarta Day 8

Good morning and how are you today? How’s your weekend? Hope you have enjoyed quality time with your loved ones.

Welcome to a brand new week. And next week will be school holidays here in Jakarta.

Can’t wait!

We hope you still remember the MidNightVisitorQuiz from last week. Come on, we have practically given away the answer! We are nice people, and the quiz is just for everyone to have some fun, not to wreck our brains.

So, without further ado, here is the name for the ‘Queen of the Tropical Fruit’:

The Jackfruit

Look at the picture above, the baby Jackfruit is so tiny. It is the size of an olive. But the grown Jackfruit is huge, bigger than an adult’s head.

Our beautiful reader abeautifulday has got it right. Congratulations, darling! Jackfruit is our official answer for this quiz.

Why did we say that? Because, actually, after a few clicks on google, we are not so sure about our answer. Obviously, the Agribusinessweek called another fruit the mangosteen (or maggis as the locals call it here) ‘The Queen of the Tropical Fruit’.

So who is the real queen?

Do not ask us, we are no experts. Our driver told us that the Jackfruit is ‘The Queen of The Tropical Fruits’, and we are going to stand by him.:D

Oh, BTW, do you know what the ‘King of the Tropical Fruit’ is? It is Durian and we are 100% sure of that.

How much is this in Jakarta

Hi, Selamat Pagi. Good Morning from Jakarta, the Big Durian.

How are you today? Can’t believe October is upon us so soon. Christmas holiday is just around the corner.

Just let you know that we have booked our air tickets to Shanghai, China last week for the Christmas holidays. How exciting! Miss D has never seen snow falls in her entire life during Christmas (yes, we have Santa wearing shorts as it is summer down under in December). We are hoping for a white Christmas in Shanghai. Hurray!!

How about you? Have you bought that plane ticket yet? Hurry, time is running out. 😀

What is your answer? We are dying to tell you the truth. And here they are:

Now, how about the price of the veggies from our local vegetable man? It is RP17,000 (1 USD = RP9,500). We also got a nice hand-written receipt with all details and individual prices for the 10 items we bought. (Yes, 10 items, not 8. We forgot about the handful of peanuts, and a few local tiny melons.)

So, what do you think?

We were pretty shocked by those prices. Amazing what the differences are!

To end this post, have a look at yet one more price we found in the supermarket here. What is the price for a bottle of Oz Tomato sauce, a small bottle of 500g?

RP 63,890! That’s about USD 6.80 for one bottle of 500g Fountain tomato sauce from Australia. We’ll stick to the Indonesia local brands for now.

When we drive around Jakarta, we see it so often that we had to know. Our driver told us it is Penjor and it’s for Wedding. Meaning the house with the Penjor in front has a newly weds living there. A very public way of saying ‘Just Married’!

Actually Penjor has its Hindo religious root and was first used as an offering to thank God for the fruits of the Earth. To read more about its origin, check here.

Nowadays, Penjor is not only featured at religious ceremony and weddings, it is also used in art performances, hotels, and at any occasion where there are guests of honor.

In fact, other than Penjor, there are also many different religious flowery decorations in Indonesia. Flower is part of Indonesia religion and culture.

What is this – Indah asks?

This week has just flown by hasn’t it? We hope you have a lovely weekend planned.

We haven’t run our weekly ‘Mid Night Visitor’s Quiz’ this week as yet, so here’s one for you. Have fun!

We were feeding our turtle Indah (Indah means beautify in Indonesia BTW) the other day, and we noticed something quite peculiar and have to take a picture of it.

This is Indah in her feeding tub. Have you noticed that there are some bits here and there inside the tub? Do you know what they are?

Please send us your answer via email or comment. The answer will be revealed next Monday.

Indah is quite messy when she eats, so we always feed her in a separate plastic tub. We got a nice sturdy KFC family bucket which we reused as Indah’s feeding place. It suits her size perfectly up till now and she is happy eating there.

Feeding Indah in a separate tub, half filled with water, does not create any undue stress (unless she is NOT held properly!!). In fact, she knows when it is her time to eat and stretches her neck out of the water looking for us when the time has come. She looks so CUTE when she does this. Separate feeding will prevent broken up food particles from remaining in the tank and fouling up the water she lives in.

When we first got Indah a while ago, we do not know how much we should feed her. We asked around our friends (seems turtles are quite a popular pet in Indonesia, and a few of our friends keep turtles as well.). A rule of thumb is to feed Indah as much food as would fit in her head and neck. Another way is to feed her as much as she will eat in a few minutes.

We learned quite a few tricks overtime about Indah. The most important one is:

Do not overfeed the turtle.

Why? You might ask. Well, like humans, obesity is one of the most common problems facing pet turtles. Remember, overfed turtles can become obese as easily as people, and face similar problems too!

How does this happen? Quite obviously, obesity is caused by too much (and too fatty) food, and too little exercise. This is exactly what Indah is, she eats and she sleeps, most of the time anyway.

To avoid Indah gets fat, we have this little game played at feeding time called ‘Run, Indah, Run’. What we do (mostly Miss D does this) is dangling Indah’s food right in front of her mouth using forceps, and make Indah run after it before giving it to her. It is quite a funny scene to watch. We have lots of giggles over this day after day.

Hope you have a lovely weekend with your loved ones. We love you and see you next week.

Which Subject Is This Homework For

Ok, we know, it is Monday and you have been waiting, wanting to know…..

Yes, it is time to review the answer to our last week’s quiz: which subject is this homework for?

Have you guessed it?

The answer is …..… Mathematics!!!

M­­mmmm, Mrs D never got that one right.

How can it be Mathematics, You might ask? Well, if you zoom into the drawing, you can easily see some numbers and percentages on it. That kind of gives it away, doesn’t it? And if we let you know how much work Miss D had put into to get these numbers, you might gasp.

It turns out that Miss D is learning about areas, shapes, ratios, and proportions at school, one of the weaklings of Mrs D when she was younger. However, being the awesome Miss D, who is pretty good at math, she spent more than 6 loooonnnnng hours to do it all:

complete 5 surveys

put all the feedback for the survey into spreadsheets

calculate the numbers

converting them into areas and percentages

etc, etc, etc …

We won’t bore you with more details, but you get the picture.

Miss D actually got frustrated at one stage herself, but carried on merrily after some Chocolate hits. (of course, she spend her 6 hours over a few days time, not in one hit, hehehe…) She is very satisfied with her end result. We hope you like it too. After all Miss D proved Mathematics can be colourful as well.

To have a look at the final presentation of Miss D’s work on this assignment, you can watch the video here. Enjoy.

Warning: although this video is made with the biggest effort of Miss D to make it colourful and interesting, it is still kind of boring IMHO, unless of course, you are

It’s been a very, very long and stressful week and we’re so happy that it’s finally Friday. This weekend we’re going to be a total sloth and just stay by the pool do nothing and we can’t wait.

What have you got planned for the weekend?

September is going to be a very exciting month for the Mid Night Visitor with new family stories, recipes, beauty and fashion ideas coming up. Please do drop by for the weekly ‘Mid Night Visitor’s Quiz’ next week. You will see one later today. Every week, on a random day, we will post one story with a quiz in it. Please send us your replies and we will publish the answer to the quiz every Monday.

Happy Friday to all the beautiful readers out there. We love you.

To begin your weekend with some fun, we have asked around our friends and also checked the dictionary to find how to say Happy Friday in different languages. Have you spotted your own language here? Are they actually correct? Do drop us a line by leaving us a comment if you spotted a mistake or want to share your language with our family. Why not ask your friends around and see how many languages you end up with.

We say it all the time, but are you curious to know what Happy Friday really means? We searched the web and found below:

a happy greeting to fellow co-workers on Fridays because it is the end of the work week.

Co-worker A – Happy Friday! imma get wasted tonight!

Co-worker B – Happy Friday! i waited forever for this day to come.

Code phase used as a greeting in business to mean
not happy with the situation or curses.

“Sure boss, I’ll work the weekend. Happy Friday!”

We are also curious to know if there is an origin to the phrase Happy Friday. If you know a story or two do share with us by sending us a message via the leave a comment sign. We love you all and enjoy your weekend.

Miss D came down for dinner and was keen to show us her homework. ‘Wow, nice drawing.’ Grandma said. ‘Well, it’s not exactly a drawing.’ A big grin shone on Miss D’s face. The whole family gathered around the dinner table and started to stare at the drawing. We all had our guesses of what it’s subject was, and had quite a laugh over it. By the way, the dinner was de-li-cious. We will post some of our recipes soon.

Well, do you know which subject is this homework for? Do send us a reply by clicking the VOTE BUTTON below.

Have you heard of Fat Mum Slim’s Photo A Day challenge? Want to know how to play over the weekend? It’s lots of fun.

“First up grab a camera or a smart phone. Save the list to your phone, or your computer, or save it to a Facebook album, your blog or Instagram. You’re more than welcome to share it. Then when September rolls around starting taking a photo each day. For instance for the 1st of September you’ll take a photo of you now. So it could be a self-portrait photo on the day, or take a photo of a photo. Then upload it to whichever platform you want to share it on; perhaps that’s Facebook, or Instgram, or Twitter or your blog {or Pinterest, Flickr, Tumblr etc}. If sharing to Instagram or Twitter, add the hashtag #FMSphotoaday.” To check out the list click here.